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To Peanut Butter Blossoms

Sunday night I went to a potluck with my group that I volunteered in Los Angeles with at the beginning of January. It was great to see people, I had run into some around campus already, but having us all back together made it feel like we were right back in California.

I decided to make cookies since I started a cleanse on Monday and knew I wouldn’t be baking for a while (we will see how long that lasts – may have to bake for others). Peanut butter blossoms are a classic that I use to make all the time when I was younger, but couldn’t remember the last time I had made them so it seemed like a good cookie to go out with a bang with.

I went to the handy dandy foodgawker where I searched for peanut butter blossoms and got quite a few results. I settled with the one that had great grandmother’s recipe in the description and in the process came across a blog that I have really started to enjoy reading – collegegirlcooking – maybe it’s because she too is in college and loves to cook and bake – so check her out.

The cookies came out great – grandmother’s are the keepers of many kitchen secrets. I guess for these it is the shortening – I am not a big fan of baking with shortening but figured why not this one time.

You can check out the recipe on the original blog post or it is as follows:

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cup sifted flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 cup shortening

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

2 Tbs. milk (I used plain soy)

1 tsp. Vanilla

Extra sugar for rolling

Directions:

Using a mixer, cream together the shortening, peanut butter, sugar, and brown sugar.

Add the egg, milk, and vanilla. Mix until incorporated.

Blend in the dry ingredients.Your dough will pull itself together into one big mass/ball

I used a cookie scoop to make sure my cookies were all exact in size and then rolled them more into a ball and then rolled through the sugar.

Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 8 minutes.

Remove from the oven and place a chocolate candy on top of each cookie, pressing down so the cookie cracks around the edge.

The recipe made a perfect 32 for me – 2 cookie sheets – I love when that happens.

In addition – if you substitute soy like I did and use an egg replacer (flax) then this is a vegan recipe since Crisco Shortening is in fact made with 100% vegan ingredients. I will be trying the flax in place of the egg next time.